Art Whore
It is hard to be at a design firm like dd|a and not have an interest, call it “lust,” for art. I only wish I had the wallet to match. That said, Omaha’s Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts has a stellar art auction each November at which my art libido has hit overdrive. In recent years, they have exhibited the works for a few weeks prior to the event. For the attendee, that has the benefit of providing a sense of the art before the evening’s bidding scrum, while allowing the Bemis to maintain a quality art exhibition and even pre-sell some of the art work.
The piece of art I lusted after.
That pre-selling certified my art covetousness, because the one piece that my wife and I wanted had pre-sold and we were SO disappointed. We had made the mistake of opting to wait for the parry and thrust of the bidding competition on the night of the auction (11.22.08 by the way). When I found out yesterday morning that another piece by the same artist was now available, my wife and I went to see it and, within 3 hours of having seen it online, bought it! It is a print by Roger Shimomura. Here is the artist blurb from the Bemis’s Web site:
Roger Shimomura’s paintings, prints and theatre pieces address Asian American sociopolitical issues and have often been inspired by the diaries of his late grandmother, an immigrant. Shimomura received his BA from the University of Washington, Seattle and an MFA from Syracuse University, NY. He has had over 125 solo exhibitions of paintings and prints, as well as presented his experimental theater pieces at such venues as the Franklin Furnace, (New York), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and The Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC).
Shimomura’s family were interned during World War II. Much of his work has explored the emotional and psychological hardships of the internment experience, based on the diaries of his grandmother. More recently, however, he has taken a more lighthearted approach to the serious themes of xenophobia, racism, and cross-cultural interface.
While the edge has been taken off of my hunger for a great art purchase, there were still one or two other pieces that caught my eye at the Bemis. Let the bidding frenzy begin …
Written by Stuart
David Day | Associates
About the Author: Stuart is constantly curious and believes conversation matters, for business, people and community. Feel free to join in...